Just a heads up for anyone that's interested in the Section 92A proposal. The Cabinet Paper is up on the Ministry of Economic Development's website and it's a 32 page PDF. I'll try to read it during the weekend and post my thoughts on it.
Ancient Medical Technique Now Supported by Science
One of the common refrains I hear often from Alternative Medicine proponents is that mainstream medicine ignores them because of some conspiracy. The Science Based Medicine blog has an excellent post on another traditional symptom treatment that works and is supported by scientific evidence.
ScienceBasedMedicine --- Neti pots – Ancient Ayurvedic Treatment Validated by Scientific Evidence
CCP CAPSLOCK AND THE PATCH NOTES
Well CCP have released the patch notes for the upcoming Dominion expansion and as usual I've taken a look at them for the interesting, useful and sometimes just funny notes. So without futher ado, here's my review of the patch notes for the Dominion expansion of EVE Online.
- It is now possible to enable warning sounds for when your shield/armor/hull drop below a certain threshold.
- Damage notification plays a warning sound whenever your shield / hull / armor drops below a certain threshold.
- Threshold for damage notification is customizable from the HUD settings.
I hadn't heard anything about this in the past so it came as a bit of a surprise. This could be quite useful during battle, especially when entering structure or low armor. Will be giving it a try.
- The jukebox now uses MP3 format for its music. Additionally, custom playlists may be specified.
Does this mean that all the ingame musiv will be available to pull out and play seperately? I hope so as I quite enjoy the EVE music while programming or doing something else that requires a bit of serious concentration.
- A new "Loot Logging" optional mode has been added for fleets. This works for taking from cans and wrecks as well as for salvaging and mining. Everyone in the fleet will be notified of all these events. You can then export the logs as a text file.
This could prove interesting, especially in the larger fights where it isn't really possible to keep track of things.
- You will now autojoin your fleet again if you connect within 2 minutes of being disconnected. You will not enter your old position within the fleet however.
Now if this applies to intentionally quitting and relogging during a super laggy battle then this will be very useful.
- You can now report players as 'ISK Spammer' from the right click menu of a character in chat. This will remove all their messages from that channel and report it to the GM's
Well that will make the buyers and sellers in the trade hubs happier and should help CCP by making it easier. I'm also sure CCP will be cracking down on anyone who abuses this feature so only use it where appropriate.
- Hacking has the following prerequisites: Science level 3(down from level 5), Electronics Upgrades level 3(down from level 5), Electronics level 1 (down from level 2), Engineering level 1 (down from level 2)
- Archaeology has the following prerequisites: Science level 3(down from level 5), Survey level 3 (down from level 5), Electronics level 1
- Salvaging has the following prerequisites: Mechanic level 3, Survey at level 3 and Engineering at level 1
- Cloaking has the following prerequisites Electronics level 4 ( was 5)
Well as someone who has gone through all the time to train up these skills I'm a bit unhappy. But it should open up the little mini professions to more people which could be useful, especially for the newer players.
- Trial accounts can no longer request missions from agents of level 3 and above.
I'll admit I didn't know this was a problem but I guess if you have a character running level 4's or 5's and get the trial account to fleet up, you could get their standings high enough and fast enough to make it profitable for the macroers.
- You can now right click on a courier package and select "Deliver Courier Package" instead of having to find the contract.
That'll make the logistic monkeys happy. And happy logistic monkeys make happy PvP mokeys.
- You can now add corp/alliances as buddies.
I'm interested to see how this will work.
I'm guessing that it will work by adding that corp or alliance to your buddy list as a single entry that you can use to quickly access their info window. This would mean that you couldn't just add all the memebers of a corp or alliance during a war to know exactly how many and who is online in the other corp or alliance.
- A trial account does not start until the person logs into EVE for the first time, not when the trial is created or activated.
That's a nice little thing that will give trial members more time to get an idea of what EVE is.
- Player owned wrecks can now be marked as "available for all", which allows everybody to take from them without causing aggression.
Well the only case I can see this being useful in is when flying with an alt or allies but generally you wouldn't be shooting them anyway, even if they do have aggro. So odd but nothing harmful.
- Drones would sometimes refuse to attack certain structures; they've been given a stern talking-to and will now obey orders with more diligence.
- Fighter drones will respond faster to return commands, instead of idling around the space coffee machine.
Is it required for drone fixes regarding their following of orders to be in every patch notes? At least they're funny though I still expect drones to randomly attack fleet members and split up without warning. ;)
- The UI is now flatter and squarer.
Ahh CCP. What would we do without this short, descriptive and utterly useless patch note. I'm guessing it's a little easter egg for those of us crazy enough to read the entire patch notes.
- You can no longer create more than 5 tabs when importing an overview XML file.
It was annouced a while ago but as a corp that uses the extra tabs it will mean a rejigging of the corp standard tab layout.
- The items filter is no longer ignoring things with only capital letters for a name. CCP CAPSLOCK approves.
Never seen CCP CAPSLOCK but I approve of his name.
So that's it for the notes I found interesting. It was interesting to see that even with all the dev blogs about all the changes there were a few new ones that I hadn't seen mentioned. If you want to read the entire patch notes yourself then take a look over here.
All in all I think Dominion is shaping up to be a very interesting expansion. Especially as I'm a 0.0 person. Bring on the pewpew!
Thoughts on FLOSS Weekly Episode 91: Boycott Novell
Last week I listened to the most recent episode of the TWiT podcast, FLOSS Weekly and their guest was the current person behind the Boycott Novell group Roy Schestowitz. Now beyond the name I have no real idea what the purpose of the site is and during the interview, Roy's responses made it seem like it was just "Microsoft is evil." with plenty of talk about him being personally insulted and slandered. At no point did he come out and say, "This is what our issues are: A, B, C. And this is what we want to happen: A, B, C."
Jono's focus on the issue of spammers being something that Roy should be dealing with all the time confused me and detracted from the interview. Really all Roy should have to do is have a disclaimer page and when he finds out a community is being infested by one of these spammers then he can contact those that run it and ask them to publicise the disclaimer that these people are not to be listened to. However it seems that
I spent the next couple of days browsing the site and sitting in the chat room. Within a couple of hours of loggin in Jono appears to this welcome.
| Hi, jono. | ||
| I saw where you called me a spammer. | ||
| Fuck you. |
http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/irc-log-19102009.html
When Roy came on an hour and a half later there was no rebuke but instead complaints about people pretending to be him and general apologistic I can't control what other people do stuff. He should have kicked him and told him off, even better would be an apology but not required.
So from someone who started off as pretty apathatic to the BoycottNovell idea I've moved to they're a bunch of muppets point of view due to their actions as a community.
Earthquakes
Well that was cool. I'm sitting at my computer looking at some stuff and feel this tiny ground tremor. I thought it was a small earthquake until three secs later when we got a good jolt. Always fun, earthquakes. Especially the thought of "THE GROUND SHOULD NOT DO THAT!" turns out it was a 4.8 only about 20km NW of us.
http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3165869g-shaking.html
So that's what happend to the Macroers
Another DevBlog from CCP came out today and it answers one of the biggest questions I've been hearing recently. What happend to the macroers? A little back story for those that don't know. A couple of months ago the systems that were infested with macroers suddenly emptied and no atter the number of threads and questions aimed at CCP no answer was forthcoming. Which lead to much guessing. Eventually the consensus seemed to land on they were banned. Now we know for sure. On June 22nd during DT CCP banned 6200 accounts of RMT's and their macroers. There are some interesting graphs in the DevBlog covering both an example system Ingunn and the server load.
It's nice to see that CCP is willing to take on this issue even when it means they're going to be seeing less income.
I Can Has Flu Vaccine?
Well today I let myself be fooled by big pharma and government and got the Flu vaccine for this year. It's the first time I've got a Flu vaccine and to be honest it was less work than even doing a blood donation. The needle was smaller that's for certain.
Now I know that it isn't going to protect me from Swine Flu which to be honest no one was expecting so how could they have made a vaccine for it. But it will protect me from the expected three major flu strains expected for this year. Also the NZ government had made this year's Flu vaccine free to everyone as opposed to the at risk groups.
Big Media Getting Tech Right for Once
I was just browsing through the New Zealand Herald's website and on the front page at the top is a link to a story, with a big picture, about web browsers. Not only that but they actually included Opera as well as the usual four suspects. The story contained a fair look at each browser and got everything factually correct as far as I could tell. So tie this up with some terminology the less tech savvy of us could understand and props to the New Zealand Herald for doing a decent tech article.
A Killmail for a Point
One of the things I feel isn't made clear enough to new players is that you don't have to be able to fly big T2 fitted battleships or fancy T2 ships to be useful within in gang or fleet. One of the roles that new players are often suggested to do is that of a throw-away tackle. A simple T1 frigate with a speed mod and a point. Even the newest of players can fill within a day or two and it can change a battle within a few minutes if done even half decently.
To exemplify this I present my alt, Treya Trewtis, who for the past few weeks has been training her learning skills up like any good alt. After completing these I sent her to learn useful skills until we got word of a POS defense op. In response I quickly grabbed the Propulsion Jamming and Afterburner skills and trained them to level 1. I then purchased an Incursus and fit three mods: an Afterburner, Web and Disruptor.
The next day we're on our op when the Goons come to play even if they weren't the ones to reinforce our POS. Next thing I know my main is blasting away while I send my alt straight at the Goons tackling anything that got called primary. A couple of minutes later I'm running off in my Pod to pick up a new Incursus and my name is on 5 battleship kills. I had survived long enough that in fact a Thanatos had been able to lock me up and start shooting at me. Lossmail. Take a good look at that fit. Three mods, no guns (I never did launch the drone) and I was instrumental in getting five kills.
Now for the one caveat. This was a POS op so I didn't have to worry about gate guns but even then a cheap, throwaway tackle is great for holding a ship until the heavy tackles and battleships can lock and point the target up. And if you're lucky enough you may even escape.
So to the newer Eve players I want to show that even with three skills, Propulsion Jamming level 1, Afterburner level 1 and your racial Frigate skill, in my case to level 4, you can play an integral part of a combat op. So don't feel left out if all you have is a frig. Bring it along and be prepared to lose it for a kill. You never know, it may be you that actually got it by holding the target down.
Forum Moderation
Well after being a member for five years I've been asked to become a moderator of the Non-Scifi Whining board at Spacebattles. I have to admit this will be a new thing for me. While I've been a mod at several smaller boards they were very tightly knot together groups where moderation was needed only to get rid of spammers and the occaisional troll. Spacebattles is different. By the board stats there are 1,800 active members and a large chunk of them visit the board I'm now helping to police. This means that I will be coming into contact with people who will not agree with my decisions and I will thus have to be able to explain my actions to them and any staff.
This should be an interesting experiance.
Never Forget Your Cloak
The core rule of flying a Covert Ops is pretty limited and simple in practice.
- Never fly without an active cloak
Or more specifically for this occurrence.
- Never warp to 0
- Never let anything get within 2,000m of you.
Tonight I failed at both and lost my Buzzard. I had probed down a Wormhole and warped to 0 at it knowing that it would put me about 8,000m off the wormhole and in position to cloak. What I then forgot to do was move away. While focusing on probing down all the other Cosmic Sigs in the system my first notice that I had been decloaked was the sound of artilleries pounding at my shields. 30 secs later it was over and I was high tailing it back to safety in my pod.
That was a stupid mistake that should never have happend and I gave a pilot a free kill. Simple lessons need to be reinforced every now and then even if they should never have been forgotten in the first place.
EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
Well it's time for the latest of CrazyKinux's EVE Blog Banters and this time I think it's quite an interesting question. So straight from this month's blog banter page here's the question. The EVE Blog Banter Contest!
Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created byCrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
"Last month Ga'len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith "WebMandrill" Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?"
So what did I choose to remove. Well read along and find out.
For this month’s Blog Banter I’m proposing that as a game mechanic gate guns should be removed completely or at a minimum from lowsec. Gate and station guns are a fact of life in lowsec away from the reaches of CONCORD. For those that have never ventured into lowsec I’ll briefly tell you about what they are for and then I’ll outline my reasoning for why I think that they should be removed from the landscape of EVE.
Gate and station guns exist on every station and gate in empire space. In high sec they really don’t do much as any aggression that gives a player a Global Criminal Countdown (GCC) will call CONCORD to that player following shortly thereafter with a new wreck in the system. If the aggression occurs within 150km of a station or gate the stationary guns position around will also throw in their two cents but by that time the aggressor is scrammed, webbed and ECM’d to impotency anyway.
In lowsec however CONCORD don’t respond to the aggression so the gate guns become the only way your naughty GCC is punished. It is possible though to tank the gate guns just like it was possible to tank CONCORD in days gone by. This means that more experienced players can sit in their battleships waiting for their juicy prey to come by and as long as they aren’t outlaws they are almost immune from any sub-battleship aggression.
So what we have currently is a mechanic that is pointless in highsec due to super CONCORD and decreases small gang PVP in lowsec by making anything smaller that a battleship near useless for more than a couple of seconds. So my proposal is simply to remove all gate and station guns from the highsec and lowsec. This would remove the superfluous highsec guns and encourage small cruiser and frig PVP in lowsec by letting them survive for longer than a few seconds. This won’t however turn lowsec into 0.0 as all other lowsec restrictions remain in place; no sov, doomsdays, bubbles, etc. This proposal also keeps the sec hit that aggression causes which means that pirates will still become flashy after too much fun. Add on the GCC means that for fifteen minutes after aggressing you can’t go back to highsec unless you want to face CONCORD and you stop people from jumping in and out of fights. I would even suggest upping the time to thirty minutes to keep people in lowsec and offer the chance to get back at them.
What the removal of gate guns is likely to do on the other hand is encourage the use of frigates and cruisers for pirates with the faster locking times that these smaller ships provide. I feel that this is a fair tradeoff as the lack of gate guns should encourage the use of small ship gangs for opponents. Also many pirates use the smaller ships already to catch other players in belts and deadspace.
To summarize, the aim of removing gate and station guns is to encourage the smaller gang PVP and entice the younger players into the not so wild regions of lowsec while still maintaining the differences that lowsec has in between highsec and 0.0. This can help bring more players into the direct ship to ship side of PVP by reducing the bar to entry with the use of frigates and cruisers. And I think we can all agree that more PVP is always good.
Edit: Well Crazy has asked us all to add these bits and the beginning and end so that's why they've been added.
MP's Spouses to Stop Getting Free Flights?
Nice loaded title ain't it. Well I've just come across a story on Stuff.co.nz where John Key has told his ministers that if they want to take their spouses or partners overseas with them on business that they will have to use their own money to do it. Now to me this is common sense. While politics seems to be largely a thankless task travel for work is travel for work, not a taxpayer funded holiday with the Mr. or Mrs. So it's nice to see one of the political leaders making a statement about it even though its up to the ministers and parlimentary services to make sure it's listened to. Here's hoping that the politicians will understand things like this will go a long way in the public's perception about their willingness to lead by example in the economic downturn and in life in general.
iPod Touch OS 3.0 New Podcast Support
Well I've just found an interesting and useful usability addition to the new iPod Touch OS for podcasts.
One thing I liked about my old iPod Mini over the Touch when I purchased it was moving through podcasts. As the Mini had the scroll wheel you could move through slowly or quickly depending on how fast you scrolled. The flat bar of the Touch meant the smallest increment was often too much, especially as some of the podcasts I enjoy push two hours. The new 3.0 OS upgrade has addressed this and I haven't seen this specific thing announced anywhere else. When moving through a podcast manually, if you drag your finger down the movement increment is reduced. Allowing to quickly and easiy place the play point where you want to.
A nice little usability touch that makes life a lot easier. Though why Apple didn't advertise this I don't know. They really need just a full size super long patch notes that people can browse.
Donating Blood
On the 12th I made my 14th whole blood donation. Blood donation is one of the few things that I have a strong opinion about. For a small chunk of time every three months most people can help save lives. I say most because there are restrictions on who can and cannot donate blood.
For example down here in New Zealand anyone that has injected themselves with anything not prescribed by a doctor are not to donate blood. Also if you've been sick recently you shouldn't be donating blood which has stopped me before.
The entire process is very safe and pretty simple. You start off with a questionerre that covers the restrictions and such before donating blood. This is followed by talking to a nurse who looks at the questionerre and takes a quick hemoglobin count to make sure that it's high enough. After all of this the easy part happens. You lie back in a bed/chair thing while a nurse preps your arm and then sticks the needle. Now this is the most painful bit because while the needle doesn't go in far it is a fair size so as not to damage the blood cells. Then you sit back reading, listening to your mp3 player, napping, anything else that doesn't involve moving about for 10 to 15 minutes while the donation is taken. Afterwards the needle gets taken out, you sit back for a couple more minutes then go and get a bite to eat and something to drink. I'd say this is the best part because who can say no to sugary stuff.
And if you want to get into it even more down here in New Zealand every two weeks you can make a plasma donation where only the plasma is taken out. This is more involved and takes longer but with all the plasma products used the blood service down here is always asking for more plasma donors.
So donating blood is a simple, safe and useful way to help those around you that are in a bit of trouble. And if you're in Wellington the nurses and other donors are good fun and good to chat with.
Inteceptor vs Covert Ops
To quickly lay out the scene my Alliance is currently participating in three wars. This should mean a pleathora of targets but around home we're either heavily outgunned or heavily outgun. This lead into me deciding to semi autopilot my way to the other side of empire space with my route going through Amarr. That means gate camps.
So to be a little sensible I take my Buzzard along to take care of some old assets that I've decided to retire. I'm flying through system after system with no war targets in local. I also don't notice I'm coming up on Amarr. Landing on a gate I see a single war target in a Stiletto. Thinking 'crap' I quickly jump through and have a brain fart. Instead of warping away I cloak and move off in a random direction away from gate. Stiletto pilot burns towards my last position and bang, I'm decloaked, locked, scrammed and being shot. Not expecting to survive much longer on goes the self-destruct and I slow boat towards the gate thanks to the Stiletto's scram turning off my MWD.
30 seconds later I realize I'm still at 80% shields and there are no other war targets coming to this pilot's aide. I'm sure he thought I would be an easy kill as much as I did. My 380m/s base speed combined with the rockets the stiletto was using meant I was escaping the blast radius. 5 seconds later I hit the gate and jump and quickly warp off to a planet while the war target's agression wears off.
It's interesting how in EVE things can go from crap to relief in a few moments. No matter which side youre on.
The tl;dr version: Rockets are useless against a frig doing 300+ m/s. Even if you do have the target scrammed.
My First Mac
Well I decided I needed a new laptop to replace the one I've had for about two and a half years. So seeing all the stuff for the past few years about how awesome Mac's are I decided to splash out and get a 13" 2.26GHz Macbook Pro.
Positives:
- Very nice body construction. The aluminium unibody is one of the major things that drew me in.
- Multi touch touchpad. The two finger tap for right click is nice.
- Battery life. Compare to the 2 hours at best for my old laptop the 6+ hours is great.
- The little LEDs and button on the side for displaying battery level. Very nice user experiance touch.
Negatives:
- No lights displaying hard disk access. Not a big thing but I found it nice knowing if the hard drive was tharshing itself to bits.
- No fullscreen on Firefox. Silly Apple for having a usability practice of disallowing this.
- Getting used to how Apple uses the taskbar. Or in their case, the Dock. I'll get used to it but it's quite different to how the *nix distros and Windows do it.
- Lack of middle click. I use this heavily for opening tabs. Comand-Click works though.
On the whole an interesting piece of machinery and I may install a *nix distro on it one of these days.
Edit: Moved one of the positives to negatives as it was in the wrong place.
My Astronomy Cast Question Was Answered
Yay,
A couple of weeks ago I sent off a question to the Astronomy Cast team asking if anything they had said in the four years the show had been around had changed. Oddly enough their answer was, we don't know. And promptly polled the listeners to send in any corrections.
Anyway. I thought it was pretty cool. Here's a link to the episode and my question starts at around the 22mins 30secs mark.
Questions: An Unlocked Moon, Energy Into Black Holes, and the Space Station's Orbit
Team Fortress 2 Sniper and Spy Achievements
I've just noticed that Valve have put back the old way of getting unlocks through achievements with a small change. The Sniper and Spy unlocks are got at 5, 11 and 17 achievements whereas the Medic, Heavy, Scout and Pyro are 10, 16 and 22.
Valve, if you're going to change the unlocks like this then change the older unlocks to match the new way.
Handmade Has to be Better?
What is it with the assumption that handmade is automatically better? So often in media and in general conversation I get the feeling that people think that because something is handmade it is more durable or tasty then something that is mass produced. I understand the superiority of custom made products such as a dining set, tailored clothes or a custom paint job.
People also seem to think that any problems with these handmade items are part of the cost of handmaking. Why is this bullcrap believed, if you can't make something as durable and tightly put together as a production line then it isn't worth buying. If you can make something more durable than a production line then yes you can charge a premium, not just because it's 'handmade.'
Oh, and I think it's a bit of a laugh to see many so called handmade items produced in a slower production line with big machining tools. The line may be many seperate stages and seperated by quite a distance but that'd be the same as calling the latest military warship handmade. Which I can agree with if the person arguing it uses that definition.
So I don't mind and even like 'handmade' items but only when they're more durable, useful and put together more tightly than an equivalent factory production line item.